How He Loves Her
by LilliaRoo
Summary: CJToby fic, set Post Bartlet adminsitration


They sit across the small round table from one another, she with a blueberry muffin and a cup of coffee, he with just the coffee. The table between them is a testament to the two people sitting at it. At first glance it doesn't appear to have a single clear space on it - it's covered edge to edge with books, newspapers, folders, memos, briefings, and the ever present, never ending supply of yellow legal pads. Looking closer one could detect two rectangular areas just the size of a placemat, looking like they have been carved out of the living mess that is the tabletop.  
  
It is almost eight o'clock on a Tuesday morning. They both had to leave for work soon. Neither wants to leave the peace of the company of the other quite yet, but neither has a good excuse to stay. At least, not one anyone else would accept. So they pretend to read, he the paper, she a memo on "The effect of a multi-pronged approach to Bt-toxin resistance". (She'll need to ask someone to brief her on what the hell this stuff is once she gets to work, she reminds herself). He jumps as a small stack of envelopes shoots through the slot in the front door. Two years after they left the White House, and Toby still wasn't used to being home when the mail arrived. He stands up and brushed her shoulder with his fingertips as she shifts towards the door, telling her to stay put.  
  
Sitting back down, he rifles through the morning's mail. "Bill. Bill. Letter from Congressman Kaslow. He probably wants me to work on that speech in Denver next month. Bill." He pauses at the next one. "Its from the President." "Which one?"  
  
"Ours." CJ looked up, a question in her eyes that she doesn't dare to ask. Toby snorts a derisive little laugh. "It's addressed to "Mrs. And Mr. Claudia Jean Cregg" He rips open the letter and unfolds the single sheet of paper inside. CJ can see the letterhead with "From the Desk of Josiah Bartlet" written across the top, followed by a page full of Bartlet's close, slanted handwriting. "Oh, the old man does love to go round and round with me." Toby says, as he looks at the pages, "He insists on handwriting everything, I know he can use a computer." But Toby is secretly glad whenever the President wrote him a note. He is always relieved that this man whom the all loved so much can still write. "So says the man who's written entire state of the union addresses on legal pads!" says CJ, laughing as she tosses one of the offending pads of paper towards him. He glances up at her, still smiling across the table at him with a look of affection, almost doting, on her face. God, how he loves her. "He says that when Abby found out we'd moved in here together she asked if you'd recently sustained some kind of massive blow to the head." "I don't know, I wonder about that almost everyday." She replies He looks at her again from under his thick eyebrows and smiles, just a little. She laughs that beautiful, deep, bell-like chuckle of hers. "Anyway, he says its about time, wishes us all the best." he indicates with his hand that in continued in that vein.  
  
Two months earlier, when he'd finally gotten up his courage and asked her, her eyes had glowed and she'd made him as happy as he'd ever been in his life. As happy as he'd been when he'd proposed to Andi, all those years ago, except this time he'd known it would work. He had loved And, but this thing he has with CJ is more than love, it's companionship, and affection, and friendship, and a feeling that they two of them fit together like, well, like the pieces of a puzzle, though Toby cringed at the cliché even in his thoughts. And he'd wondered himself why this independent, strong, beautiful woman would want to live with him. In all the years he'd known her, she'd never been the type of woman to base her success on a man. Men had come into and out of her life, but she'd never settled on any of them. He'd only seen her suffer at the loss of a man once, and even then she'd covered it so well that people who didn't know her hardly noticed. They'd known she was sad about the tragedy, but only a few of them had known the extent that Simon's life and death had affected her. That was the kind of woman CJ was, the kind of woman she'd had to be, in the job she did. She was an intensely private person with an utterly public persona. And when she'd let him into her private self he'd known the depth of feeling that it entailed for her, and he took such extreme care to never hurt her by allowing their relationship become fodder for the press. The first time a reporter got a picture of them together he felt like he'd ripped her clothes off in front of the entire White House Press Corps. But what he had not understood about CJ was her amazing ability to adapt. She'd addressed the picture, said "the White House does not comment on the personal lives of its staff." And when Katie had said, as jovially as the press ever got, "You mean you don't comment on your love life to the press, CJ?" CJ had flashed a smile around the room and said, "I don't when its of importance to me, Katie."  
  
"Well, hey!" exclaims Toby, skipping down to the next paragraph. "Charlie and Zoey got engaged!"  
  
"Aren't they a little.no, I guess Zoey's what, 25 now? Wow, Toby, we're old!" Toby had stood up and walked his coffee cup to the sink as she was doing the math in her head. Coming back to the table he stands over her (one of the few opportunities he had to do that), and tips her head back into his hand. "You don't look it my dear. You never will." He says, as he kisses her. "And anyway. Charles may have beat me by a few weeks - and thirty years - but there's something I've been wanting to ask you. I should have done this 25 years ago, but somehow things just kept getting in the way." "You mean you - and me. We kept getting in the way." CJ says, putting her hand quietly on his chest, which is just in front of her, Toby having gone down on one knee as he was talking. She laughs as she says it, and grins through the tears that have formed at the corners of her eyes. Toby brushes them gently away, smiling. Then he pulls the box out of his pocket. "Claudia Jean -" "Yes. Oh God, Toby, yes. Of course, Yes! It's always been yes." She drags him up, hugs him so hard he is sure his ribs will split, before kissing him for what feels like an eternity. A wonderful, perfect eternity. When they finally brake apart he looks into her huge sparkling, beautiful eyes. "You know, I had a whole little thing planned there, that I was gonna say." "Yeah Toby?" she grins, "did you write it out on a legal pad?" "Well-" "Read it to me." God how he loves this woman. 


End file.
